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World must unite to fight terror, Netanyahu says after assassination of Russian envoy to Turkey

By JTA: December 20, 2016

JERUSALEM — Israel condemned the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, in an attack described as an act of terror.

Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov was shot and killed while visiting an exhibition of Russian photographs in Ankara. The attacker, identified as a Turkish policeman, 22, shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo. Don’t forget Syria” in Turkish, and “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is Great” in Arabic, apparently referring to Russian air strikes on rebels in Aleppo as part of the Syrian conflict. The attacker was killed by police inside the exhibition hall.

“The murder of a diplomat serves as a stark reminder of the need for the civilized world to come together in fighting the forces of terrorism,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement issued Monday evening in the hours after the incident.

The Syrian forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad have in recent weeks retaken the besieged city of Aleppo from rebel forces in the country’s nearly six-year long civil war. Russia has remained one of Syria’s closest allies,

Early Tuesday morning, Turkish police detained a man who fired a shotgun in the air in front of the U.S. embassy in Ankara, several hours after the attack that killed the Russian ambassador in an arts center directly across the street. The embassy in Ankara announced Tuesday morning that it would be closed for operations, as would the consulates in Istanbul and Adana in southern Turkey.